Hybrid Assignment 4
Astra Taylor’s chapter, “Drawing a Line”, tackles the topic on the lines that are crossed in digital advertising. The information that is gathered on users through their daily online behaviors is carefully monitored for the sole purpose of advertising opportunities. The very idea that the Internet has a large influence on our psyche is relevant to how many ads are shown and produced for viewing. Without realizing it, the user is absorbing these moments, advertisements, visuals, words, and newscasts all with the intention of shaping you. The driving forces are the advertisers. Taylor shows this by describing how “companies compile highly detailed dossiers, which they use to tailor the content we see” (Taylor Pg. 190). The motivation to formulate profiles based on people’s experiences, age, marital status, and religion are all things Taylor states are turning users into “reputation silos”. With privacy laws continuously being challenged and boundaries tested, the future of digital monitoring can reach discriminatory grounds, especially as Taylor brings up, an example if used to determine credit worthiness.
Taylor discusses the serious and quite disturbing reality of “e-waste”, the discarded electronics that are taken for the purpose of recycling, or disposal. She believes that the improper discarding and unrealistic statistics that surround this in our digital age is a crippling situation for the economy and damaging to those who are exposed to the chemicals associated with the processing. The concept of sustainability is foreign, or ignored. Every time someone buys a new electronic product, we are left to do something with the old piece. Most people don’t recycle them and instead hold on to them, however this unnerving desire to go out and buy the ‘newest thing” is as Taylor describes, an intentional obscurity that is put into place to force people to buy more, more quickly. The life span of a product is short and even if it isn’t, the new version of the same product allures people to spend. She sees this cycle as dangerous and careless for the environment with people not realizing the true cost.
